‘And if we lose?’ Philopoemen said. ‘Let me tell you what happens. Gortyna will fall. The oligarchs will restore their own. There will be hundreds of executions, including, I would guess, everyone in this room. The common men and farmers who demand a battle now will be deprived of their liberty and then of their property, and all of that can be avoided.’
‘Better win the battle, then,’ Dinaeos said. ‘Because the time to fight the battle is while our citizen farmers are baying for it like dogs cornering a stag.’
‘There is another thing,’ Phila said into the silence.
Everyone turned to look at her. Even in the liberal atmosphere of Gortyna, it was rare for any woman to speak out in a political discussion.
‘Cyrena?’ Phila said gently.
‘Zophanes is trying to sell us to Knossos,’ Cyrena said.
‘You know this?’ Philopoemen said.
‘Soon I’ll be able to prove it. And it is not Creon, although ordinarily I’d be the first to say that birds of a feather—’ Phila shot her a look, and she shook her head. ‘Never mind. Zophanes sent a letter to Mineas of Knossos. Two, now. I have intercepted both.’ She looked around. ‘I would like to send them now. They will do us little damage, but perhaps we will see who else is involved. But he means to betray the city.’
‘And if we act against him …’ Dinaeos said.
Lykortas shook his head. ‘It will look like politics. Given how often he argues against us …’
Dadas shrugged. ‘Just kill him,’ he said.
Cyrena smiled bitterly. ‘I think we’d do better to watch him. Learn who follows him.’
‘Internal divisions are another reason to fight soon,’ Dinaeos said.
Philopoemen looked at his friend for a long time, and there was no sound. No one ate or drank. Later, Alexanor wondered if anyone had moved, or even breathed. Time seemed to stop.
‘Well,’ Philopoemen said. ‘That’s me told. Friends, I’m afraid. Battles are in the hands of Tyche. We could lose. We could lose for reasons beyond our control.’
Lykortas stood up. ‘You of all men take too much on yourself,’ he said. ‘We will not lose.’
Dinaeos stood up. ‘I agree with Lykortas. We have a fine body of men and good officers. We will not lose.’
Philopoemen looked around. ‘If I agree to this battle, will you agree that it happens when and where I say?’
‘You think you can determine the timing and location of a battle?’ Dinaeos asked. ‘Are you going to send the oligarchs a herald, in the old way?’
‘Not exactly,’ Philopoemen said.
CHAPTER FOUR
Knossos and Gortyna
LATE SUMMER TO WINTER 219 BCE
Alexanor went back to the sanctuary the day after the Assembly summoned the phalanx of Gortyna. He loaded a baggage train of medical supplies and took Omphalion, Leon and all ten novices, leaving only two priests and the best-trained slaves to see to the pilgrims.
By the time he took his train of donkeys back over the mountains, accompanied by fifty Aegyptian horses brought by a smuggler and all of Periander’s mercenaries, he was late for the muster. When he arrived before the city gates, the ‘Army of the Federation of Crete’, as it was called, had already marched for the mountain passes.
Alexanor was surprised at how robust the garrison left behind was.
‘He left almost two thousand men,’ Phila said. She had forage ready for his medical team’s animals, and water skins, and wine. ‘And he left a garrison in each of the port towns.’
‘He recalled my lads,’ Periander said. He shrugged. ‘And replaced them with locals.’
Alexanor had doubts, but he kept them to himself, and he and Phila and Periander and Leon rode to Petra.
There, thousands of men camped on the ridge overlooking the valleys around Knossos. The camp was organic, but carefully organised; the tent lines were not straight, but conformed to the contours of the hills. The front of the camp was covered by three large forts dug into the hillsides, covering all three of the easy approaches to the ridge.
Lykortas escorted them to their assigned camp area and showed Leon where to site the military hospital.
‘So he’s going to fight here?’ Alexanor asked.
Lykortas shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he admitted. ‘Dinaeos is out with all the cavalry, somewhere to the east. Another raid? A reconnaissance?’ The young man shrugged again. ‘And Plator the Illyrian, and Telemnastos with the new archer corps, are off to the west, linking up with the Polyrrhenians and stealing more cattle.’ He pointed at the camp at their feet. ‘There’s our phalanx in the centre – on the right are the Lyttians. You know they are Spartan colonists, eh? Anyway, Phil and Dinaeos assume they’ll fight like lions as they’ve lost their city.’
‘It is a strange war that Philopoemen is on the same side as the Spartan colonists,’ Alexanor said.
‘It’s odder than that. Sparta’s new king has sent a contingent to the Knossians. Quite a sizeable contingent – Spartiates and mercenaries.’ Lykortas steadied his horse, which was tormented by the ever-present flies, and shrugged. ‘I have trouble remembering what the sides are.’
Phila waved an arm over the valley. ‘It’s everyone who detests oligarchy against the oligarchs,’ she said. ‘And we’ll accept any ally who will help us. For now.’
‘Maybe you should be Strategos,’ Lykortas said. ‘You certainly look like a goddess on horseback.’
‘Where is Philopoemen?’ Alexanor asked.
Philopoemen was far down the valley towards Knossos when Alexanor found him, the only man on horseback with a hundred peltastoi and Cretan archers. The archers were the only genuine federal troops; the League of Crete, established by Philopoemen in Philip of Macedon’s name, had put together a taxeis of the selected epheboi of all the cities opposed to Knossos, trained archers with excellent armour, the kind of men usually sent overseas as mercenaries. They were paid by the ‘Federation’. They wore some armour; the richest wore maille cuirasses and good bronze helmets, but they carried the heavy bows favoured by Cretan archers. They also had swords, and light bucklers.
They were moving down the valley. Ahead was a village – twenty white buildings shining in the sunlight, and a small temple to Hera, its sacred precinct defined by a wall of stones culled from the fields around it by farmers.
‘Basileus,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I’ve been through before.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I doubt they like me.’ He pointed north. ‘Three valleys converge here.’
There were, in fact, steep, knife-edge ridges towering over the village.
‘Three?’ Alexanor asked, dismounting. He was not used to riding and his thighs hurt. Again.
‘They’re all roughly parallel and fairly narrow,’ Philopoemen said.
Ahead, the archers moved forward carefully, exploring every wall, every stand of trees.
‘The Knossians have hired a Spartan commander,’ Philopoemen said. ‘Nabis. Remember him?’
Alexanor smiled. ‘He wanted to defile the sanctuary at Epidauros. And then you crushed his cavalry at Sellasia.’
‘Yes, well, now he has lots of men and, let’s admit it, he’s quite competent.’
Philopoemen rode on in silence, his light troops scouring the fields. A handful of federal epheboi moved into the village proper, and then six of them went into the temple sanctuary.
‘Abandoned,’ Philopoemen said. ‘Good, in a way. Fewer civilian casualties.’
‘You plan to fight here,’ Alexanor said, realisation suddenly dawning.
‘No,’ Philopoemen said.
A young man with blond hair emerged from the temple and waved.
All of the archers relaxed.
‘No,’ Philopoemen repeated. ‘I just want this Nabis to think I plan to fight here.’
The Boeotian mercenaries and the Achaeans, some of them now mounted on the Aegyptian horses Alexanor had brought, moved forward in the early afternoon to Basileus.
Philopoemen had his horse tied to a pi
ne tree just outside the sacred grove. His light infantry were mostly asleep in the shade of the olive groves, with a handful of sentries thrown out to the north, and two men, changed every hour, on the highest ridge above the town. Periander marched in and occupied the houses.
Alexanor noticed that the mercenaries were better armed and armoured than they had been the year before. Chain maille thorakes were now everywhere; new bronze helmets sat on every brow.
‘I should bring up the hospital,’ Alexanor said.
Philopoemen was reading from a pair of scrolls, his back to the temple precinct wall.
‘No need,’ he said. ‘We won’t fight here.’
Out on the plain of the valley, the fifty newly mounted Achaeans rode up and down, instructed by Aristaenos and Kleostratos. Most of them were just learning to ride.
They raised an impressive cloud of dust. They also entertained the epheboi who were awake by falling off, and other antics.
‘But you brought up more men,’ Alexanor said.
‘I’m a deceptive bastard.’ Philopoemen smiled. ‘By the gods, I hope I am. We’ll know in a couple of hours.’
‘But …’
‘The Achaeans are here to raise a dust cloud. The Boeotians are among my most trustworthy infantry. You know what is hard? Retreating. It demoralises, and it seems pointless, and men desert, or lose cohesion. It’s all right here.’ Philopoemen held up the scrolls. ‘Xenophon.’
‘Ah, Xenophon,’ Alexanor said. ‘I read some of his Memorabilia.’
‘This is Anabasis. Ten thousand men retreating across Asia.’ Philopoemen smiled. ‘If this works, we will need to get out of here in a great hurry. I can’t have amateurs, and I need the men here to trust me.’
The sun began to sink into the hills in the west.
Philopoemen was obviously nervous. To add to his apprehension, messengers began to come in from Lykortas, and from Antiphatas, requesting permission to bring the phalanx forward.
‘Gods, no!’ Philopoemen shook his head.
He called for Arkas, his groom, and then turned to Alexanor.
‘Everyone knows you. I need you to be my voice. Go back and make them stop. I do not want the phalanx here. I am not fighting here.’
Alexanor had seldom seen his friend so emotional.
‘Of course,’ he said.
He mounted the fine gelding that Philopoemen had given him two years before and rode back along the main valley and then, as quickly as he could manage, up the ridge to the lines before Petra. Arkas rode with him, silent.
Antiphatas was waiting at the edge of the fortified camp, fully armed. He had his helmet up on the back of his head and his heavy aspis at his feet.
‘We’re ready to march,’ the Cretan said. ‘It’s late in the day. Does he still intend to fight today?’
Alexanor slid from his tired horse.
‘He begs you not to advance. I believe he is setting a trap for the Knossians. He does not intend to fight down below, and he ordered me not to advance with the hospital.’
‘All he has down there is fuckin’ foreigners!’ an angry hoplite spat.
‘We want to do our own fighting,’ said another.
‘He is deceiving the enemy,’ Alexanor called out. ‘And all he took were the men best at running away. I assume he doesn’t think you men are any good at running away.’
‘Nicely said,’ Arkas whispered. ‘Damn, sir.’
Alexanor watered his horse, drank some himself, and ate bread and olives with Phila.
‘I want to be down there. What’s he doing?’
‘Everyone wants to be down there. I think he’s doing something underhanded and he doesn’t want witnesses,’ Alexanor said. ‘I’m still not convinced he means to fight a battle.’
‘He can’t go back now!’ Phila said. ‘The phalanx would crucify him.’
‘I’m not convinced that Philopoemen always knows what the rest of the world is thinking,’ Alexanor said. ‘I’m going back. I beg you not to come. If a woman—’
‘I know,’ Phila said. ‘If a woman comes to a battle, it’s the end of the world. I’ll just wait in camp and see who wins, and then I can die ingloriously.’
‘In this case,’ Alexanor said, ‘I mean that if you come with me, Antiphatas and all the rest will insist they must come too.’
She handed him a Boeotian cup of unwatered wine.
‘Fine. But please tell me everything when you return.’
‘I promise,’ Alexanor said.
He and Arkas slipped back down the ridge as the shadows of the trees became long stripes of shade across the barren ground. There was dust in the valley – a haze over Basileus – but also puffs of more distant dust, lit red by the setting sun, over towards Knossos, twenty stades beyond the tiny village.
Once they were clear of the rocky slopes, Arkas led the way at a gallop and Alexanor got his weight forward and survived. He was a far better rider than he had been at Sellasia, but he didn’t gallop very often, and staying on was the limit of his ambitions.
He could measure Philopoemen’s mood by the speed with which the commander shot to his feet when he saw the approaching horsemen.
Alexanor saluted like a soldier. ‘They’re still in camp,’ he said.
He noted that Dadas was there, covered in dust and looking like a cat who had eaten the family cream.
‘They’re so late I thought they weren’t coming,’ Philopoemen said, pointing at dust clouds in the direction of Knossos. He rubbed his hands together. ‘I feel like a boy about to kiss his first girl. Never let anyone tell you that command is a wonderful thing.’
Alexanor guzzled some water and wished he hadn’t drunk Phila’s unwatered wine.
Dadas rode away into the gathering gloom, headed north, towards Knossos.
‘Must you be as mysterious as a playwright?’ Alexanor asked. ‘Is this some hitherto concealed flair for drama?’
Philopoemen turned his horse and watched the hills either side of the central pass above them.
‘For three days I’ve been baiting the Knossians to come out and fight,’ he said. ‘And now, too late in the day to actually fight, they’re coming out.’
‘So they don’t intend to fight,’ Alexanor said.
‘That’s my guess. It’s fine with me – I didn’t intend to fight today either. Maybe Nabis is smarter than I expected.’
‘Maybe the oligarchs are merely cautious?’ Alexanor said.
‘Why? None of them are doing the fighting.’
‘Rich men think of these things differently,’ Alexanor insisted, thinking of his father. And Aspasia. I really need to do something about that, he thought, before dismissing it from his mind.
Suddenly, the head of the pass seemed to erupt with dust. Cavalrymen began to crest the pass and ride down the long road to the village. There were more than a hundred of them.
‘Tell Periander to get moving,’ Philopoemen said to Arkas, who cantered away to the village.
The Boeotian mercenaries piled out of the houses of the town, set fire to two of them, formed sloppily, and began a hasty retreat up the valley.
‘Now Aristaenos,’ Philopoemen said.
He motioned to Alexanor, who, reduced to the role of messenger, ran across the hard-packed fields. As soon as Aristaenos saw him waving, he looked up, saw the cavalry coming, and his trumpeter sounded a long call. The Achaeans filed off, already better horsemen, and headed towards the distant, looming rock of Petra. They raised even more dust than the Boeotian mercenaries.
The oncoming cavalrymen, clearly Aetolians, gave hunting cries and broke into a gallop, riding hard in pursuit.
‘Are we in danger?’ Alexanor asked, riding back to his friend. Philopoemen was alone in the little agora of the village, and the Aetolians were just a stade away.
Philopoemen no longer looked apprehensive. He was calm.
‘No,’ he said.
The Knossian advance guard swept into the outskirts of Basileus, and the federal archers who had
been hiding in the long grass stood up and loosed a volley of arrows into them from very close; most men shot two or three shafts. A few missed, and a handful of Aetolians, accompanied by horses without riders, broke away from the front of the town. Other horses put their heads down and began to munch at the grass, ignoring their dead or dying masters.
There were forty men dead. One older man screamed and screamed like a woman giving birth. Ravens began to gather from the west.
Philopoemen rode over to one of the archers and prevented him from lofting a shaft at the fleeing survivors.
‘Let them go,’ he said.
‘You are merciful,’ Alexanor said.
‘Not really. Let’s go.’
The Cretan archers plucked the shafts they had prepared by sticking them in the ground at their feet, and dropped them back into ready quivers. Then the entire taxeis began to trot back up the ridge, abandoning the town. They moved more quickly than Alexanor would have thought possible – as fast, or faster, than the Achaean cavalry.
‘Fit young men,’ Philopoemen said, watching Telemnastos sprint past. ‘That was our part. The rest is up to our opponents, and Dinaeos.’
The Cretan archers ran on, vanishing into the rising dust of the retreating Achaeans. Alexanor reckoned they must be invisible from the pass above.
‘One thing you learn about on cattle raids is dust,’ Philopoemen said.
Then he was quiet as they trotted along the road towards distant Gortyna, beyond Petra and the high pass.
Looking back, Alexanor saw a scarlet-cloaked figure emerge from the mouth of the pass of the central valley. He raised an arm imperiously and bronze-clad figures began to tumble down the slope towards the village. Other men, shrouded in dusk and dust, rolled out to the left and right, staying on the heights. The enemy commander was marshalling his light troops carefully, sending peltastoi well around the village to make sure the hills were clear of any traps. They passed the mouth of the first valley and nothing happened. Alexanor was getting a pulled muscle in his neck from turning to look, and he was sending confusing signals to his gelding.
The New Achilles Page 30